Stefan Mileschin

While the CISPA bill looks certain to be vetoed by President Barak Obama , the fact that has managed to get this far is down to the man who pushed it through Congress – Republican Mike Rogers.

But according to TechDirt, Rogers had a serious and undisclosed conflict of interest.

While Rogers himself has nothing to gain from the CISPA bill becoming law, his wife could make rather a lot of money.

Until recently, Rogers' wife, Kristi Clemens Rogers, was the president and CEO of Aegis which is a security defence contractor company. On her resume was the fact that she secured a $10 billion contract with the State Department.

TechDirt has not managed to stand up any proof that Kristi makes any cash if CISPA goes through. Her new job is as a managing director of federal government affairs and public policies at Manatt. Manatt is a big lobbying firm, where she's apparently focused on "executive-level problem solving in the defence and homeland security sectors".

Washington had noticed how strongly Rogers has been fighting for CISPA. There is nothing wrong with that, after all it is his bill.. He refused to acknowledge the seriousness of the privacy concerns and could not keep his own story straight about whether or not CISPA is about giving information to the nation's spying agencies. As it turns out, the law will mean that private data will go to the NSA.

He even claimed that the only opposition to CISPA came from 14-year-old kids in their basement, which was untrue, but also a rather strange thing to say.

But it is something Washington has seen before in Washington Life Magazine a few months earlier. In an FUD article and made up of statements with no proof, hackers were described as a "teenager in his or her parent's basement with bunny slippers and a Mountain Dew". Sound familiar? This Washington Life article was penned by Mrs Rogers. But it uses ideas that her husband would repeat later and leaves him open to claims that they are singing from the same hymn sheet.

Last month Rogers made a mistake when he accidentally tweeted a story about how CISPA supporters, like himself, had received 15 times more money from pro-CISPA groups that the opposition had received from anti-CISPA groups. He rushed to delete the tweet but it had already been circulated.

http://news.techeye.net/security/rog...f-cispa-passes